‘And this is a trumpet vine. When I had my house I planted one at the side of my door. It grows as fast as wild honeysuckle, I should think it is up to my chimney pot by now. If it hasn’t pulled the whole house down. This I had on the other side of my doorway – the Virginian woodbine tree, like a honeysuckle. But best of all will be the tulip tree.’ John touched the saplings, which were planted against the shelter of the wall and were putting out glossy dark leaves at the tips of their branches. ‘Please God we can grow it here, it would be a fine thing to see in an English garden.’

‘Finer than our horse chestnut?’ Johnnie asked, naming the tree that would always be the Tradescant benchmark of beauty.

‘It is the only tree I have ever seen to match your grandfather’s horse chestnut. Truly, Johnnie, it is a most wonderful tree. If I can grow the tulip tree and sell it to the gardeners of England, as he grew the horse chestnut, then we will have done wonderful work, he and me.’

‘And what will there be left for me to do?’ Johnnie asked. ‘Since he went east to Russia and south to the Mediterranean and you have been west to America. What will there be left for me?’

‘Oh,’ John said longingly. ‘So much still to see, Johnnie. You can’t imagine what a great country it is and how far the rivers run inland and how distant the mountains are and how wide the grass meadows stretch. And beyond the mountains they told me there are plains and meadows and forests and more mountains, and inland lakes of sweet water that are as big as the sea, so vast that they have storms which whip up the water into waves that crash on the shore. There will be so much for you to see when you are a man grown and ready to travel.’

‘And will you take me, if you go again?’ Johnnie asked.

Tradescant hesitated only for a moment, thinking of Attone and Suckahanna and that other, alien life. Then he looked at the bright face of his son and thought how proud he would be to show him to Attone and to say to him: ‘And this is my son.’ Johnnie was not a child of the Powhatan: a dark-eyed, brown-skinned boy of intense self-discipline and skill. But he was a child of equal beauty: an English boy, blond-headed, round-faced, and with a smile like sunlight.

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘If I go again, I will take you too. It will be our adventure next time.’

‘We can go when the king has come to his own again,’ Johnnie said firmly.

‘Mmm.’ John was noncommittal.